Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today the world was witnessing a “new era” with modern technological advances and urged the international community to reform the United Nations to give the world body a new direction of multilateralism. Prime Minister Modi delivered his much-awaited second address to the annual United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) session here.

For long, India, along with Brazil, Germany and Japan, has been calling for the reform of the UN Security Council. The four countries support the bids of one another for the permanent seats in the top UN body.

“In this new era, we have to give new energy and direction to multilateralism and the United Nations,” Modi said.

India has repeatedly reaffirmed the need for early reform of the UN Security Council including the expansion of both permanent and non-permanent categories of membership to enhance its legitimacy, effectiveness and representativeness.

Along with the fellow nations in the G4 bloc, India has maintained that the current composition of the 15-nation Council does not reflect the changed global realities and stressed that the UNSC reform was essential to address today’s complex challenges.

India, even in the past, has warned that the UN risked falling into irrelevance in the absence of fundamental reform measures and said multilateralism would collapse if the world body remains ineffective.

One may recall that the League of Nations formed after the First World War had failed to deliver, the evidence of which surfaced in the form of the Second World War. The United Nations post-WWII was a new avatar of the failed League of Nations. A prime reason for that failure was its lack of multilateralism.

Modi had delivered his maiden address as the prime minister to world leaders at the UN General Assembly in 2014.

This year, his visit and address to world leaders is the first after winning a second term as Prime Minister in a resounding electoral victory in May.